Tag Archives: The Hollows

Oh, what a wonderful night, giving away at least 700 pieces of candy for two hours straight. The streets of my little town were full, and the weather cooperated. I swear, there were as many adults wandering around in costume as there were kids. I do love my street. Add in chili, homemade bread, and family to share it with, and I’m a happy girl.

Even better, the pumpkin patch just keeps growing! The contest for the ten random and five chosen winners is now closed. I need a day to look at them and find the most sincere. (wink) You guys amaze me with your talents. Tomorrow morning, I’ll inform the winners at the addresses they used to send me their photo, so check your in-box. 🙂 I’ll also post them here in a new blog, but wait for me to contact you if you see your pumpkin. 🙂

Thank you for playing along with me! You guys made my Halloween. You really did.

It’s the last day to enter the Kim Harrison, pumpkin carving contest! I’ve gotten a lot the last few days, and just as a reminder, ten will be chosen at random as winners, and five will be chosen by me depending on my mood and how much candy I’ve eaten. Tomorrow I’ll share the winners with you after I get in and post the last entries from tonight.

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, and we have almost as many decorating tubs in the basement as we do for Christmas. That you guys are sharing the fun with me has really put the boo in my step. Thank you. 🙂

I also want to thank you for all the support and shares I got from you all the last few days concerning not just the contest, but for getting the word out about PERfunctory afFECTION (or just Perfection) which just came up on Subterranean for pre-order. One of the best ways to help your favorite authors is to share their presale/on-sale announcements even if you can’t buy the book, so THANK YOU! If you are curious, there’s a blurb on their site, but I’ll feature it myself after Halloween.

I got a few more entries last night, so check them out! If you’re just now joining the fun, I’m accepting pictures of your pumpkins (taken with your favorite or most accessible Hollows book) at my e-mail address here: Kim_harrison@comcast.net. Full rules are at the original post All Treat, No Trick. Cut off for entries is Halloween night, midnight. Good luck, everyone! And thank you for playing along with me!

A big, sloppy-author thank you from me today to those of you who jumped on the presale of Perfection yesterday. I took a look at Subterranean’s ordering page last night, and my jaw hit my chest. The extra-special leather-bound copies are gone. Thank you for that. It made it hard to sleep. 😉 But in a good way. This book is me stretching without losing that Kim Harrison feel, and I hope those of you who get a chance to read it, enjoy it. If you are just now hearing about PERfunctory afFECTION, I talk more about it at yesterday’s post.

But we’re here for pumpkins and free Hollows books! Wow, did I get a lot of entries for the contest last night! Check them out. Some of you have taken this to a real art form. The talent! And thank you for your kind words on which Hollows book is your favorite and why. I’ve fallen back in love with the Hollows, and you’ll be glad to know I’m almost done with the rewrite for the next Rachel/Trent book (AMERICAN DEMON) and ready to send it to my agent to find a new home. I can’t wait for you to meet Hodin–a yummy slice of dark demon goodness.

If you’re just now joining the fun, I’m accepting pictures of your pumpkins (taken with your favorite or most accessible Hollows book) at my e-mail address here: Kim_harrison@comcast.net. Full rules are at the original post All Treat, No Trick. I’m still taking entries until tomorrow night, Halloween. Good luck, everyone! And thank you for playing along with me!

Sing it from the top of my roof, and pass it on. My new book has gotten its marching orders, and if you haven’t heard, PERfunctory afFECTION is now available for pre-order from Subterranean Press! (insert wild Snoopy dance here) Yes, it’s pricy, but the print run is like 2,000 copies instead of 200,000, and they are all signed. It’s a collector book, pure and simple, and will not be readily available in the stores. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is the length, (an odd size, but I cringed at padding it to get it novel length.) It’s also not your usual Kim Harrison fare, though it’s clearly from my pen. (Tim finished it and came into my office shouting, “No way!”) Perhaps I had a few issues to work out, having just left a situation that did its best to crush my will to write, but in any case, I wanted to give you the link today to give you a shot at them in case they go fast. Link to Subterranean. As I said, it’s a VERY small print run for me, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that Subterranean picked PERFECTION up. They are a high-end publisher, and if you haven’t heard of them, you are missing out on a lot of fabulous, unique publications by authors you know and love. Take a moment to do a search while there, and check them out.

But today, I want to focus on pumpkins and free Hollows books! There was a lot of carving going on this weekend, and here are the latest entries in the Hollows carving contest! I’m accepting pictures of your pumpkins (taken with your favorite or most accessible Hollows book) at my e-mail address here: Kim_harrison@comcast.net. Full rules are at the original post All Treat, No Trick. If I don’t get many more pumpkins, odds are really good you’re going to get one of the fifteen give-away books. (wink)

Chapter Two for you today! If you missed the first one it can be found here

The Turn
By
Kim Harrison

Chapter Two

Stifling a yawn, Trisk confidently made her way deeper into the underground labs of Global Genetics. It was nearing noon, and she could feel her body slowing down, forced to stay awake to hold to a human schedule. After three years, she no longer nodded off over lunch, but it was hard to fight the urge for a four-hour nap when the sun was at its highest. Elves were most alert at sunrise and sunset, but it had been ages since she’d allowed herself the luxury of her natural inclination to sleep at noon and midnight.
Her low-heeled baby-doll shoes were eerily silent on the polished floor, and the faint smell of antiseptic was a familiar balm, pricking the back of her nose. After noticing a few high eyebrows this morning, she’d closed her lab coat to hide her short, bright yellow skirt, but the matching hose still made a colorful statement. Her lab assistant, Angie, said the outfit was fine, but getting the new look past the stuffier old men she worked with was proving to be difficult.

“Hi, George,” she said to the man at the glass double doors, and he rose from his desk to open them for her. There was no need to show her ID, and she didn’t even bring it out from behind her lab coat.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Cambri. Save me a piece of cake?”

His smile was infectious, and her mood brightened. “One with a rose on it. You got it,” she said as she crossed into the restricted zone.

Immediately the drier air and tang of ozone from the massive com- puters under her feet made her long hair float, and she impatiently tried to corral the strands that had escaped her hair clip at the back of her neck. If she were at the elf-run NASA facility, the computer needed to comprehend the genetic code of just one organism would fit into a room. Here, with human-only equipment, it took an entire floor—at least until someone leaked the technology and humankind took another leap forward.

Trisk heard the building’s head secretary before she saw her, the woman’s trendy thigh-high vinyl boots clicking on the hard floor. “Hi, Trisk,” the bubbly older woman said as she turned a corner and came into sight. “Are you getting him now?”

“Right this minute,” Trisk said, and Barbara beamed, her eyes alight as she took Trisk’s hands for a quick second.

“Outta sight! I’ll make sure everyone is in the lunchroom,” she said, the click-clack of her boots quickening as she ran in prissy, mincing steps to the security door and the elevators beyond. Her colorful dress rode high, and her hair was tall, but the day planner tucked under her arm had everyone’s schedule in it, and the self-appointed mother of them all knew more than anyone about how to keep the small facility working, even if she did look and act like an aged stand-in on American Bandstand—which raised the question: If Barbara could get away with flaunting the new styles exploding into the shops this summer, why couldn’t Trisk? Because Barbara isn’t helping design tactical biological weapons, Trisk thought as she passed her lab, still proud of her name on the door.

Today, I give you my favorite element on the cover. It’s one that I asked for when my editor and I first began talking about what should be on it, the star of the entire show, the T4-Angel tomato, savor of the third world, genetically engineered to withstand drought, cracking, pesticides, and grow tall without staking. It’s truly a scientific marvel of the sixties, and I think it’s a wish fulfillment of me not being able to grow tomatoes well.

Until . . . a governmental virus escapes and spontaneously attaches to it and kills a quarter of the world’s population.

This we know. The truth . . . is a little different, and Trent’s parents are involved up to their little pointy, docked ears.

So I asked for a tomato on the cover, and I got it, but someone had the idea that it was a magical tomato, and had put magical radiating lines coming out from it. It looked great, but the feeling of a magical tomato wasn’t doing it for me. This was the destruction of the third world and the beginning of the Turn in her hands, and it wasn’t magical, it was horrifying. So I doubled down and asked for the “magic lines” to be removed and for the tomato to be black and decaying, putrefying in Trent’s mom’s hands. I wanted to make a ugly, horrifying image to contrast with the flowing beauty of Trisk herself. I think I got it.

I’ll give you the entire cover tomorrow with an explanation of my idea of what makes a good fairytale, but if you want it tonight at midnight eastern time, sign up for my newsletter. They’re getting it first.

It’s a small thing, and you might not even be consciously aware of it, but most of the Hollows books use the same font for the title and author name. It has to do with name branding, and the first cover image I saw had the title and author in a thin font with swooping, graceful lines–extensions looping down and out along with sharp points sticking out here and there. It was beautiful, especially with the billowing dress blowing up and around to her elbows, but having both swoops and spikes was confusing. It was nothing like the thick, straight up and down, almost columnar font everyone identifies the Hollows with. I wanted you guys to know it was me so you’d, er, pick it up, so I asked if we could have something more familiar.

It’s not a perfect match, but I wasn’t looking for perfection. I just wanted something harsher with straight lines without the swooping arcs confusing the feel. I got something kind of Gothy with a sword point, and I like it. If you look close in the larger picture, you can see that the author name looks very close to the previous titles. It feels comfortable and recognizable.

Okay, the tag line. “The Hollows Begins with Death.” The original idea was to have a tagline that reassured readers that this was a Hollows book, so I came up with the full line “Even the Hollows has an untold beginning . . . and it begins with death.” I’m glad they shortened it for the cover, but wow, it sounds kind of dramatic for me. Death. Yeah. Swords and pitchforks. (grin) But yes. You don’t kill off a quarter of the world’s population without mentioning death.

Tomorrow, I give you what she’s holding. It was my idea, and I hope it adds to the feeling I was aiming for. Sometimes my ideas don’t come across well, especially to those not already invested in the series. A tomato kills the world. Ah, yes. It could happen. Let me tell you how.